 It’s Friday!!! Happy happy joy joy! Whosyourdaddy? Bark like a dog! Woof. Bark like a BIG dog! WOOF!
Very pleased to have the Thursday from hell behind us. Cousin Fred and Friend Lamont were in the Main House here at The Compound all day watching the Ford vs. Kavanaugh hearing. All day. Gavel to gavel. Oh, sure there were snacks and drinks, followed by a lot of nonsensical analysis by political/legal pundit and all-around idiot Cousin Fred who was deriving the bulk of his “keen” insights from social media which was lit up all day, gavel to gavel. The key takeaway from his analysis was as follows: “It was a friggin’ circus!” Well put, Cousin Fred, well put. And, very insightful. I have to admit I’m still not sure I get why they brought in the female prosecutor from Arizona. She seemed wholly ineffective to me. Some reporting tagged it as a cynical move…trust me, I’m king of the cynics and still don’t get it. If you’re a lot smarter than me (and I hope you are) please explain. I’ve ensured the doors are locked and the lights are out this morning, so they aren’t tempted to repeat yesterday by showing up here to watch as the Senate Judiciary Committee goes to vote this morning. This despite the fact that Friend Lamont offered to deep fry some hedgeapple slices in trans fat for snacking. Besides, I have to get this place cleaned up, it turns out the Wife has been deported from Tahiti and is on her way back here. I was planning to update something I thought I reported back in January, but it turns out I just thought about it, but never posted. So, this is an update to a post that never actually posted. Keep up people! Last December a couple from Cali were driving across the country to deliver 60 pounds of marijuana to Vermont to be used as Christmas gifts. Seriously. Now there’s stocking stuffer. Unfortunately, they made the mistake of driving through Nebraska. They were stopped and consequently arrested for driving 60lbs of Christmas joy through the state of Nebraska. Nebraskans hate Christmas! Did I mention the couple doing the driving are aged 80 and 71? No? They are. Turns out 60 pounds of high-grade weed is worth something north of $300,000. Their defense was that they didn’t realize it was illegal to transport marijuana through Nebraska. Hmmm. So, while awaiting their trial in Nebraska they were released back home to Cali. Then in January, with their daughter at the wheel they got stopped again (different county) in Nebraska. Seeing a pattern here? This time they were arrested because the cops found a duffle bag with $18,000 in cash that tested positive for cannabis residue. But no weed. So, they were arrested for suspected drug dealing (you think?) and again released. Their trial on the first arrest got them three years’ probation. The trial for the second arrest hasn’t happened yet. What have we learned here today? First, apparently transporting marijuana through Nebraska is illegal. Who knew? They should post big signs at the state line that say it is illegal to transport marijuana through the state of Nebraska for the purpose of Christmas gifting. and Second, stay the hell out of Nebraska. That is all!  Good to be with you this Thursday morning. Hope everyone is well. I was up all night here at The Compound finishing a draft for self-help guru Fredriche’s (aka, Cousin Fred) next big self-help book, “Toward a Millennial Utopia: Max Out Your Credit Cards and Walk Away.” I must admit I’m a bit apprehensive about this one. Beyond the obvious ethics questions, I have concern that he’ll wind up in some sort of legal jam. As the title hints (hints as in a fog horn), he is proposing that people go out and apply for credit cards and then max out the credit limits while pursuing their own personal hedonistic lifestyle…whatever that personal hedonistic lifestyle may involve…for them, personally. The idea is to do it quickly before the bills begin arriving in the mail demanding payment. At that point Fredriche recommends simply walking away. If you’re smart, according to him, you’ll spend the money on things like booze and food and other consumables that can’t be repossessed. After a few months of living large, you declare yourself mentally incompetent, have an attorney file for bankruptcy, and start all over (after five or six years). Sure, you’re dead to the credit providers for a period of several years, but so what? If you plan it well, you can live life on your terms at least until they cut off your credit line. Thus speaketh Fredriche! Oh, now, after reading one of the Post Redux that we posted in the past day or so, Cousin Fred is all hot to trot again on harvesting the hedgeapples from the wind break in the far south pasture and trying to make snacks out of them. It didn’t work in 2015, it’s not likely to work now. He is deploying Friend Lamont to explore the possibility since we’re on hold until Oklahoma can completely figure out the medical marijuana thing and we get rolling (pun intended) as growers here at The Compound. I heard Cousin Fred talking last night about investigating the possibility of cannabis-infused hedgeapple slices. Good gawd, we’re all going to hell out here! But, I’m beginning to realize that we’re actually in step with the rest of America. For example, did you hear about the 37-year-old woman in Oregon who has been arrested 39 (read as, THIRTY-NINE) times since 2011? What the hell happened to the (wholly ridiculous) three strikes law intended to take career (even petty career) criminals off the streets, you ask? Good question! Our Ma Barker wannabe was most recently arrested for stealing an ambulance that was idling by the road while the paramedics in charge of said vehicle were busy trying to do CPR on some poor guy dying on the side of the road. With me so far? Ma took the emergency vehicle and then sped through town in it before hitting Interstate-5 where she led police on a 30-mile chase at speeds exceeding 85mph at times. Finally, the cops used a spike strip over the road to bring her to a screeching halt at which time she was arrested. Now then, as for all her other 38 arrests, they include disorderly conduct, trespassing, criminal mischief, harassment, DUI (a few of those), menacing, meth possession (there’s a surprise) and violating parole (too name a few). In 2017 alone, she was arrested 10 times. Not exactly a criminal mastermind, is she? Hey, Ma, CRIMINAL MASTERMINDS DO NOT GET CAUGHT. Dumbass! I know, I know, the hedonists among you are saying, “Hey, the girl just wants to have fun and live life on her terms!” Fredriche is now considering making her a case study for a new self-help book tentatively called, “You Can’t Possibly Have Too Much Fun.” It’ll be available wherever grocery store tabloids are sold or the corner of a couch needs propping up. When she was arrested for the ambulance heist, she was quoted as telling officers that she didn’t understand “Why would they (EMTs) would leave it (ambulance) unlocked” and our personal favorite, “F*ck, I’m going to prison.” Indeed, you are princess, indeed you are. That is all! A very good Wednesday to all of you. This is day three of re-posting greatest hits from the past, which interestingly you people pick. This is the phubber post from October 2015 (note, no photos at the time)...again, it pops up every now and then as a particular month's most read post. Perhaps it's the description of using hedge apples (nasty, nasty, nasty things) for just about anything - or, maybe it's just the practice of phubbing. Either way, this should be the last of the re-posts...on with the show! Enjoy!
***** Happy Monday everybody! I slept in late this morning. Probably just as well since it was raining when I stepped outside. I sit out there in the pre-dawn darkness, sipping coffee and wondering just what the heck I did wrong. Haha, just kidding. I had to be quiet this morning though. Cousin Fred is sleeping on the sofa in the family room. It’s kind of fun to be within earshot of him as he sleeps. He doesn’t snore, but his mind never seems to shut down. All night long it sounds as though he is conducting an old fashioned tent revival. The likes of hooting and hollering I’ve never heard from anyone who was conscious. Once the revival meeting gets going, he’s there thrashing around. Then the conversation starts, followed by singing, followed by maniacal laughing. Okay, I said it was kind of fun…actually, it’s kind of creepy. Plus, he begins…ummm…emitting short bursts of gas in time (and key) to whatever that is he’s singing. Normally, Cousin Fred would be in the spare room sleeping, but the wife still refuses to come out of the bedroom until Cousin Fred leaves. I haven’t told her yet, but that may be awhile. So I’m exiled to the spare room. After Friend Lamont arrived with his commercial-grade meat slicer on Friday, he and Cousin Fred flipped a coin to see who would get the smaller guest room. Cousin Fred lost. We were all busy this weekend, with Friend Lamont doing his best to perfect the technique for slicing the hedge apples into thin slices to be coated with Aunt Daisy’s special caramel. By golly, I think we got it. Once the caramel sets up, the slices are really quite firm. And, actually do resemble a buffalo chip, hence the name. Taste-wise, ehhhh, I’m not so sure. Honestly, they still taste like bitter hedge apples if you ask me. I put a couple on a plate and set them outside the bedroom door for the wife to sample. I heard the bedroom door open and knew she had at least pulled the plate inside. That was followed by a shriek and a couple of thuds against the wall in the hall outside the bedroom. I looked to find that the two buffalo chips I had left for her were now stuck to the wall. One had a bite mark out of it. It occurred to me then, failing everything else, we could probably sell the buffalo chips as construction adhesive. Seriously, I tried to peel the darn things off the wall and pulled off a big chunk of wallboard with it. Guess the wife’s vote is no. Actually, there was a woman who sent me an email last Friday after she read the blog post. She said she used hedge apples to ward off spiders and other insects from her home. Wow, cures cancer and scares bugs…talk about your basic panacea. The thought also occurred to me that we could use the buffalo chips as sticky traps for things that go bump in the night. The possibilities are endless, I reckon. Cousin Fred was not to be discouraged however. He commented that he would ratchet up the sweet a bit in Daisy’s caramel and maybe add some finely ground jalapeno to the mix. I have to admit that having all this activity going on around the compound is a bit unsettling. But, Cousin Fred and I share a common strand of DNA, which is probably why we’re both so entrepreneurially inclined and challenged. Still, I’m beginning to worry about the wife. I keep wondering what she’s doing back there. Probably running up the data charges on her phone, binge watching Irish soap operas…from Ireland. Her favorite is “As the Lager Chills” the storyline of which follows the lives of a family of pub owners. Too much drama for me, plus I have a hard time with the accents. So, I guess I’ll leave her be, for now. She’ll continue to ignore us in favor of her iPhone and iPad, which are, in the big scheme of things, probably better company anyway. That reminds me of an article on the NewOK web site this weekend about something called “phubbing” – short for phone snubbing. It’s the latest concern for sociologists and others with advance degrees for which there isn’t any real work. Phubbers prefer to engage with their smartphones rather than the person sitting next to them. They sit and zip through the various apps, checking to see if their long lost high school pal (who appeared out of nowhere after 30 years) has responded to their text, checking the latest prices on their stocks (even though it’s a weekend and markets are closed), checking the weather to see if it’s going to rain in the next twenty minutes (after checking it 20 minutes ago), and then finally running that damned ghost finder app to see any ghosts have taken up residence in the past 10 minutes (they’re everywhere I’m tellin’ ya!) instead of listening to the person trying to have a conversation with them. Phubbees are apparently suffering from depression and a generally “lower rate of life satisfaction”…judas priest. I thought I’d heard it all. You know something. If that’s the biggest thing bringing you down, snatch that phone away from said Phubber and smash it into a million pieces. Seriously…what the hell is humanity coming to that technology is pushing us to the edge. I could go on, but Cousin Fred is now reciting the Saint Crispin Day speech from Henry V in his sleep and I don’t want to miss it.  Okay so here we are, day two of running some of the older posts again. This one is running Number Two for you people (again, remember, it's your pick). This is from October 2017. Enjoy!
***** Geez…what a mess the world is in right now: O.J. is back among us; The Trump is tweeting more cryptic threats about blowing up someone…NoKo or Iran, it’s unclear…but someone – may – be going down; Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer quit though the bulk of Hollywood claims it’s all a smear campaign; did I mention that O.J. is back among us, okay good; still another hurricane is making landfall in the U.S.; the Sooners lost a game yesterday they should have easily won; the guitar player from the Lovin’ Spoonful was busted with child porn; you suppose The Trump will invite O.J. to play golf with him…eh, probably not; the white nationalists with their Home Depot tiki torches are back in Charlottesville; lunatic millionaires are shooting up music festivals; and…well, you get the picture…I did mention O.J. is out and moving around again, right? But, I have no time to focus on any of that right now. The stage is set for a disaster here at The Compound, the likes of which were never imagined by Harvey Weinstein or acted by O.J. (he’s out now, you know) or presented in an OU playbook (their defense SUCKS). So, to bring you, the dedicated CCB reader (all four of you), up to date on the latest happenings here (cuz you don’t have enough to worry about)...the female geriatric army of spiritualists (hereafter Vintage Buick Princesses) arrived late Friday and immediately formed their vintage Buicks in a circle on the center lawn here at The Compound. They announced they were taking a defensive posture this time because of the mass of “humanity” they saw spread across the rest of the grounds. The Queen Bee among the group told me they felt they needed a place to fall back to just in case things get out of hand. This is The Compound. Everything gets out of hand. Constantly. Cousin Fred has dubbed their iron enclave Fort Apache. It prompted him to break out and don an old U.S. Cavalry costume he had hidden away for just such an occasion. Did I mention that said costume includes an authentic cavalry bugle? No? (sigh) Cousin Fred uses that now to blast out calls to the hordes here. Did I mention, hordes? Yeah, hordes. So beyond the Histrionic Historians, the Swarthy Texans, the Burning Man Refugees, and the Florida Gator Cult, we now have a pack of Soon-to-be-Former IRS Agents (they see the writing on the wall with The Trump), a herd of Rocky Mountain High Coloradans looking for a smoke shop (none here, this Oklahoma where we rely on the moronic state legislature to tell us what we should be doing since we’re all incapable of critical thought – that of course doesn’t take into account the pedophiles, perverts, and other bad elements among them), speaking of which there is also a huge body of fact finding moronic Oklahoma State Legislatures on a boondoggle here to learn from the “people” what we need and tell us about what a great job they’re doing in OKC. Oh, and there’s Cousin Fred. Blowing his F@#ing bugle at every opportunity! About the only time anything good happened on Saturday was when Friend Lamont from Western Arkansas showed driving a truck that was pulling a flatbed trailer with porta-potties. The law enforcement out on the road, seeing that they’re vastly outnumbered, apparently have called in reinforcements. There are cops from all over the state out there. They’re going to use this as a training exercise, me thinks. It won’t end well. So as the masses gathered yesterday and the Vintage Buick Princesses emerged from Fort Apache and began trying to restore order here at The Compound (they were beating the crap out of the miscreants [miscreants abound here] with their purses), I was beginning to think things couldn’t get any worse. Things did. And, no, O.J. didn’t show up…yet. Oklahoma City media sent the channel 4 and the channel 9 helicopters out here to get a view of the humanity squeezed onto The Compound. In the sky buzzing The Compound, we had channel 9’s SkyNews 9 HD (with Tornado Payne-in-the-Ass in the passenger seat, swearing he could see a wall cloud approaching from California out here – note: the sky was blue), along with channel 4’s Bob Moore Chopper 4 (with Hands Morgan in the passenger seat urging people to go south to get away from the impending storm – he was watching the video feed from channel 9). There were several near-mid-air collisions. Law enforcement on the road notified the FAA and NTSB to start en route…it was going to be a disaster! In the meantime, channel 5 was sending someone in an old pickup from OKC – they arrived early this morning. Channel 25 is still trying to figure out where Cosmic County is located. Finally, both helos set down in the north pastures and their respective pilots and passengers emerged, well one of the passengers. A fight ensued. Hands Morgan tried to remain in his seat. Tornado finally dragged him out with Morgan screaming…”…the teeth, don’t hurt my teeth…” Fortunately, law enforcement intervened. All hands were hauled to jail. The two helicopters remain in the north pasture. One of my dogs keeps running out there to pee on the landing skids. Things kind of settled back down here…well except for the unwashed hordes spread across The Compound and Cousin Fred blowing that F#@ing bugle. This morning he’s out on the road, blaring the mess call on the bugle and handing out donuts to the cops. Oh, the Wife, you ask? She’s up on the roof, cackling her fool head off, chain smoking filterless Pall-Malls, and swigging Old Crow rot gut whiskey. Where else would she be? Can’t wait for tonight when the real fun starts. That is all.  Happy Monday afternoon everybody. I'm out for a few days on some medical weirdness so I've decided to run a few days of CCB greatest hits (so to speak). And, they've all been voted on by you without you knowing (isn't technology grand?).
According to the statistics on this site, what follows is the top post - though after reading it I'm not sure why. Eh well, it's the will of the peoples I guess! Enjoy! ***** Wow…Tuesday already. The week is just zipping by. Recall seeing a meme go past on Facebook recently that said, “Nothing messes up your Friday like finding out it’s only Tuesday.” Now, that’s profound! Things are returning to a basic sense of order here at The Compound. Or, at least as much as things can…considering the looney bin my life has become. All of Cousin Fred’s minions have returned to their underground county bar, The Pukin’ Dog Lounge, like so many cockroaches heading for the pantry when the lights go on. They were camped over in the south pasture since the Fourth. Turns out, they just needed a ride back to the PDL, or the PooDLe as we here at The Compound now call it. We managed to load them all onto a flatbed trailer yesterday and get them over there. At least I can walk out onto my lawn now in the morning without being greeted by the sight of 50 naked bodies performing Tai Chi at sunrise. It was cutting into my own naked sunrise greeting. The Wife finally came down from the roof when the winds picked up a couple of days ago. Once her big-ass beach umbrella took off for Kansas there wasn’t much to keep her up there. Gigi has gone back to New York to pick up the hairdressing or whatever that is of The Trump’s do. His daughter did an okay job, but Gigi kept seeing him on TV and pointing out that Ivanka wasn’t wrapping it around his head in the right direction. She left her Lexus here…a sure sign she’ll be back, I suppose. Cousin Fred got the artesian well pit filled back in, for now. He insists that everything stops until we see what Lawyer X can do to get the state to drill a well for free. It certainly won’t be anytime this summer that Lake Mountebank refills, at least not fed by an underground spring. The courts are so backed up that the preliminary hearing is set for sometime in February 2017. It’ll be worth it to see Lawyer X trying to cover both sides, objecting to himself and then objecting to the objection to himself. It’ll be worth the price of admission, I’m telling you! By the way, for those of you wondering why we haven’t been talking about the series we shot up in Colorado for our new reality series, Bigfoot: Naked and Untamed, it’s because it looked as though the Bigfoot thing was beginning to die out. First, the Zombies then the Bigfoot. It’s getting so you can’t depend on mythical beings for anything! Ahhhh, but then! Yesterday, I was perusing the Huffington Post website and what do you think I found? Not one, but TWO, count ‘em TWO separate articles about the Bigfoot. WE’RE BACK! The first was a piece about ESPN Magazine shooting its annual body issue which generally has photos of athletes of all genders, shapes and sizes naked. So, the makers of that beef jerky that has the Bigfoot as its mascot, (Jack Link’s, I think) thought it would be fun to pose the Bigfoot a la Burt Reynolds in Cosmo back in the day. The result was an 8 foot Sasquatch reclining with a raccoon in front of his ummmm parts. Not sure I get the raccoon, but whatever. Well, that got me to thinking that maybe there’s a Sasquatch revival coming, but then I realized that it’s just a commercial ploy to sell more dried out beef. But then, further down the page, there was an article about the one of the two men who filmed the infamous Bigfoot footage back in the 60’s that became the documentary that dumbass kids my age went into a theater to watch, called…well, I can’t remember what the theater release was called, but it contained the most famous one minute of an “actual” Bigfoot tramping along near a creek shown over and over and over. Google Patterson-Gimlin film, you can find it. Anyway, the sole remaining filmmaker Bob Gimlin, who is well into his 80’s now, says that he wishes he had never left home to go Bigfoot hunting with his pal, Roger Patterson. The HuffPost piece entitled, “Bigfoot Ruined My Life” tells how Gimlin has had to endure decades of humiliation as the butt of jokes about the film. And, do you know, that both of those articles no sooner went viral – well as viral Huffington Post can be – than the phone begin ringing. I received a call from Chick Farris’ altogether able assistant Fergus yesterday. Fergus informed me that Chick is working a deal to land a permanent home for Bigfoot: Naked and Untamed on some cable channel. There’s even talk about shooting a second season already. So, I guess we’re off and running again. Cousin Fred says that no matter the outcome in Hollywood, we have to be back here before Labor Day though. It seems that he is planning yet another Holiday Extravaganza. Maybe someday Huffington Post will do an article about me entitled, “Cousin Fred Ruined My Life!”  Ah ha! Not going to listen to Mr. Robin, are you? Just dismiss me as another clueless hack, is that it? Well, thhhppppppttttttt to you!
When we last posted, I predicted that sooner or later Fearless Leader’s face would split open and the reasonably-sane measured-responses and empathetic Trump we’d been observing over the past week or so would fly out the window like so many monkeys flying out of Dorothy Whatshername’s butt! Well, that SPLAT sound you heard yesterday was Fearless Leader’s face in fact splitting open. He’d had all he could takes and he could takes no more. Suddenly, he turned on the Cali Prof who was accusing his saintly Supreme Court nominee and viciously attacked (okay, mocked) said Cali Prof in Twitter. Ah, the world is right again! Seriously, I was beginning to feel physically ill thinking I wouldn’t have the old Fearless Leader to pick on any more. Picking on the new Fearless Leader was making me look cruel and heartless. Phew…glad we’re past all that. Fearless Leader took to Twitter yesterday taking shots at Cali Prof and the Dems that were buying her story. Actually, it started Thursday night during a rally in Vegas (Vegas, really?) when he asked in a very mocking (not to mention amateurish) sort of way why someone didn’t call the FBI 36 years ago when the alleged assault took place. He repeated that in the Friday morning tweets. There is speculation that Fearless Leader’s change in tone is part of a larger move by the White House to finally get the Dems off their collective pondering asses and let the Kavanaugh thing go to a vote. After all, we have assurances from that walking corpse of a Senate Majority Leader, Mitch “Da Turtle” McConnell that “…in the very near future, Judge Kavanaugh will be on the United States Supreme Court…” Yup, uh huh…that’s what Da Turtle Mitch said alright. Once the gloves came off on the Kavanaugh vs. Cali Prof, Fearless Leader was free to tweet his damned thumbs to a nub taking on head Keebler elf, Jeff Sessions, saying essentially, ‘he’s dead to me.’ And, let’s see, he was swinging at the FBI again (a favorite target). But, his tweets about Cali Prof were really pretty vicious saying that if the attack was as bad as she now indicates, where are the police reports? He wondered out loud where the parents were in all of this since she was 15 at the time. This from a man who stands accused of sexual abuse by nearly two dozen different women? He’s going to turn this back on the victim before anyone actually hears her out? This is dangerous territory for Fearless Leader AND the GOP, me thinks. Oh, but it didn’t stop there. No sir. So, also on Friday the New York Times, that supposedly last great bastion of liberal thought, published a story that said that Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general overseeing the Mueller investigation had last year suggested invoking the 25th Amendment that would effectively remove Fearless Leader from office for unsuitability and just generally being crazy. Rosenstein reportedly even offered to wear a wire in his meetings with Fearless Leader. This, of course, has the House GOP whipped into a frenzy that Rosenstein should be impeached if Trump doesn’t fire him first. Rosenstein, for his part, is vehemently denying the veracity of the NYT’s story. He says it is completely without base and denies it all. This is twice now in the past couple of weeks that the New York Times has published stuff that remains clouded in doubt and suspicion. We told you in posting earlier this week that the infamous NYT op-ed piece by a high-ranking insider was likely a plant. That is, a story that gets pushed to the editorial staff for publication that meets the (in this case political) needs of its alleged writer. It happens a lot in DC…if you think there is any truth in media left, I can tell you there isn’t much. I have some experience first-hand and indirectly with steering the media to say what the Government wants said. It happens. Get over it. I’m a little surprised the Times fell for it…twice. Yep, I think this Rosenstein nonsense is a plant also. Think about it…makes it easy to fire Rosenstein without the backlash that you might otherwise have gotten. I’m certain the buffoons in the WH probably figured they got away with it the first time, why not a second time. This country is going to hell on a propaganda train loaded with insensitive, narcissistic who have figured out how to hoodwink the American people into believing their nonsense. Trust me it won’t end here. And people wonder why I drink. That is all.  Okay, it’s Wednesday! No big deal, right? We’re all just humming along like a four-cylinder engine running on two cylinders. There’s a new crisis brewing here at The Compound. Apparently, someone realized that the one thing that potential growers of medical marijuana here in Oklahoma have overlooked is where to get the seeds to grow the devil’s lettuce (we say that facetiously). Who cares? Where did the folks in California or Colorado or Washington State get their seeds? Probably from their own stash. Just sayin’. But, there was Amanda Taylor on television last night, giving everyone the go-to-hell stare as announced the growers’ dilemma last night and turned it into five minutes of excruciating “we told you so” undertone. She (Amanda) really needs to go. Send her to someplace like Des Moines where they appreciate the abuse. If I wanted to be lectured, I’d beg the Wife to come back from her fabulous (and now apparently permanent) vacation to Tahiti. Frankly, it’s probably the people opposed to medical marijuana that are fanning the flames. And the local news outlets just lap it up like dogs cleaning up their own puke. Again, who cares? But I digress, on to bigger and better things (maybe). Friends, have you ever considered that perhaps we’re all being hoodwinked? I mentioned in a previous post a passing comment about how I thought that the infamous New York Times anonymous Op-Ed piece had been written with Fearless Leader’s hand. Now, others are climbing on that bandwagon too. And, you thought I was just a little too paranoid!? What makes me think that? Well, consider first that Fearless Leader is the epitome of an egomaniacal narcissist. What better way to create sympathy/empathy/fill-in-your-favorite-pathy in a mid-term-election year than to create controversy and drama about a traitor in your midst? Announce that there is an investigation and that you are closing in on the alleged rat…and then nothing…it’s dies out as the new headline grabbing crisis du jour comes along. Even the on-again, off-again Omarosa weighed in saying that she thought it sounded like a member of that cardboard-stiff-Pence’s staff. I’ve spent enough time over the years in/around high-level staffs to see how that could work. Someone cooks up a stupid idea and they have someone associated with a deputy (in this case, Vice President) draft something that the others later say, “Yeah, that’ll do the job!” Assuming the seed of the idea came from Fearless Leader’s “genius, stable” brain, think of it as you would those people who suffer from Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy – wherein the person seeks attention at the peril of those in their care. Okay, a weak analogy maybe, but there’s no doubt Fearless Leader lives off the attention he creates for himself…he seeks it out, he wallows in it, and he generally feeds off it. So now, he’s taking it even further. He wants us to believe he is suddenly a measured-response, reasonably middle of the road, moderate Fearless Leader saying he wants the woman in California to have her time in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee testifying about her alleged sexual abuse experience with prospective Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh. Wow, how fair and balanced can one person be? That seems so profound, albeit surprising when you think of it coming from Fearless Leader. Go figure. Oh, and now the woman says she wants the FBI to investigate before she appears before Congress. Huh? Cynical Mr. Robin believes this is beginning to smack of a purposeful delay tactic. What purpose is there in having the Feebs investigate? You have a story to tell, get up and tell your story. Now, I see in the overnight newsfeed that the woman and her family have gone into hiding after numerous death threats have been made against her if she testifies. What the hell is wrong with people in this country? The #realdonaldtrump would normally be tweeting about those darn Dems who are just seeking a way to scuttle his jurist nomination prior to the mid-terms. This moderate Fearless Leader is creepy. It’s like we’re waiting for his face to melt and the real stuff start spewing forth from his thumbs. Obviously, someone is making him behave in ways that he is loath to do. This is so uncharacteristic as to make us cynical bastards sit back, rub our chins, and give a long hmmmm. Maybe we can take some comfort in the fact that it’s probably killing him to act civil and (dare I say) dignified for the first time in his presidency. 
It’s Monday and we’re all so happy to be here! Yeah, right. I’m hard at work on the second step in Cousin Fred’s (aka, Fredriche – Gigi added the “e” at the end, makes it sound almost royal(e) according to her) self-help tome “How to Stop Living and Start Worrying.” Basically, it’s not spending any time with self-analysis or strategizing your way through life’s problems. It’s all about plunging ahead into a deep cesspool of angst and worry. Lots of worry. Worry that will have you smoking several packs of cigarettes throughout the night. Worry that will keep you awake for days until you finally lose it and go buy ammo for your old Red Ryder BB gun with the compass in the stock. And finally, worry that will make you think that Fredriche is a friggin’ genius and you buy all his other crap (i.e. self-help books) from Amazon. I’m having to hurry through step two because the Hairdressing Hydrologist Gigi wants a completed draft by close of business (whatever that is – after all we’re on Compound time around here) tomorrow. I still have Step Three to maneuver through. There goes the rest of my day. You know, friends, as you dedicated readers of this blog (all 12 of you by last count) know, we here at CCB are occasionally accused of sophomoric humor. In fact, the Wife is constantly berating me for the use of cheap, sophomoric humor to gain more followers. To this I say, “Thhhpppptt! I’m catering to a certain class of blog reader here! Present company excepted, of course.” Besides, she’s still in Tahiti on yet another of her fabulous vacations, so what does she know? I bet they don’t even have internet in Tahiti. So again, “Thhhpppptt!” Real life can certainly be sophomoric at times. Take for instance the little town situated in between Springfield and St. Louis, Missouri along I-44. The town has the name Uranus…yeah, like the planet, except they pronounce the name like you would expect, well…a sophomore to gigglingly say it rather the more sophisticated way you would expect an astronomer to pronounce it. The town’s motto is (and we are not making this up), “It’s not a town, it’s a destination!” Okay, that’s pretty sophomoric even by our standards, but then you learn that the town’s biggest attraction is the world’s biggest fudge factory. Still not sophomoric enough for you? Wait, there’s more! So, there’s a newspaper starting up in town called…get ready for the uber sophomoric punch line…the Uranus Examiner. The publisher announced she was starting the paper at a county meeting last week. This coming on the heels of a longtime (allegedly legitimate) news publication shuttering its doors earlier in the week. People from the surrounding communities are outraged. They believe the newspaper’s name will make a mockery of their county. The people of Uranus (pop. 25) think it’s hilarious and will attract more attention (and hopefully visitors) to their town located on the backside of Missouri. The outrage is going so far that people who are required to publish public notices in the paper are refusing to do so unless the Uranus Examiner changes its name. That’s not likely to happen. There’s fudge to sell dammit! Okay, I could make more jokes about an asinine name, but I’ll let it go…turn the other cheek, so to speak. Nyuk nyuk! That is all!  Welcome to Friday everyone! Most of you lucky devils will get a two-day rest before hitting the trenches again on Monday. But, not me. Oh no, not me! Cousin Fred found his way into the main house here at The Compound yesterday and passed off his notes for his first self-help guru book (hopefully you’re all sitting down), “How to Stop Living and Start Worrying.” I know, I know…huh? I pointed out that he’s just ripping off the old Dale Carnegie classic, “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.” He paused and looked around (like there’s anyone else around here…the Wife is still on her fabulous vacation in Tahiti) to make certain no one was listening. He shushed me and pointed out that most Millennials haven’t a clue that Dale Carnegie even existed. “Yeah, so,” I responded? According to Cousin Fred, he isn’t ripping off the Carnegie legacy if he rewrites one of his books so completely as to confuse the reader into believing it’s new millennial psycho-babble. I know, I know…huh? Having taken the Dale Carnegie course when I was a teen (my parents thought it would give me a leg up as an adult – remarkably, they were right), I began looking through Cousin Fred’s notes. And nearly fell over when I read what was in them. One of the first tenets of Dale Carnegie’s “How to Stop Worrying…” is a three-step approach to confronting worry to eliminate it from your life by looking at your concerns with logic and rationality (i.e., how bad can it really be?). Cousin Fred’s three-step approach is to proliferate worry to make you a meaner, and by his reckoning a much more successful individual. Here are his three-steps:
Somehow, I think this will be a disaster, but as Cousin Fred pointed out, you have to have a hook to make it to the top of the self-help game. If that’s the case, I’ll grant you he has a hook…and it’s barbed. Oh, the best part…he’s changing his author name on the books. He will now be known as either Fredrich or Federico. According to him it has a classier, more guruish sound than a mere Fred. Says he’ll let me know which it will be before we must send the manuscript off to the publisher. He told me that the Hairdressing Hydrologist Gigi wants a final draft by this coming Tuesday! Pointed out that I don’t anything else going on. Hmm, well he’s right about that I guess. Anything I have to do is meaningless in the face of philosophical genius spewing forth…I guess. Friend Lamont, in the meantime, has been building the metal framing for the vinyl-covered buildings that will house the medical marijuana enterprise. Interesting that Cousin Fred can start so many businesses and do so very little himself to participate. I want to be more like Cousin Fred. Friends, did you hear about the guy (pictured) down in Florida who was rushed to the hospital for some unknown ailment (wonder if it had something to do with his ear lobes – those look painful). Was treated in the emergency room and then released. But, he didn’t have a ride home. He steps outside and sees the same ambulance that brought him to the hospital and guess what? The keys are in the ignition! What’s a fellow to do in such a case? I’ll tell you what! Avail yourself of said ambulance and drive yourself home! That’s what! After all, those stupid paramedics drove you to the hospital without so much as a thought as to how you would return home! Am I right? It’s only fair that they should give you a ride back home! Is it your fault the paramedics aren’t around to do the driving or even ask permission? Hell no! And, after all there’s the old military adage about “better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.” Oorah! Oh yeah, Ear Lobe Dude was arrested for Grand Theft Auto and Driving Without a Valid License. Sheesh…cops never give a guy a break. He just wanted to go home. That is all!  <Shhh…keep it down.>
I’m hiding out from Cousin Fred this morning. He’s trying to rope me into his latest project – the self-help guru thing - and I’m doing my best to avoid him and the Hairdressing Hydrologist Gigi. Oh, yeah, happy Thursday by the way. But, you didn’t see me! So, like he doesn’t have enough to keep himself occupied, Cousin Fred is now trying to engage me in his wacky enterprise. Stupid me, when I heard he and Gigi talking about a self-help project, I honestly believed there was a whole philosophy of life thing coming. And, it may have started that way. But, while we were at the Burning Man Festival, Gigi was steering the train onto a siding. Apparently, along the way in developing a self-help philosophy of life for Cousin Fred to spew, she discovered that there was way more $$$ to be made in simply writing self-help books of one sort or another, whether they actually help some self or not. That is where I come in. As most of you know, I have experience writing for and/or contributing to books, newspapers, magazines, screenplays, web content, and this stupid blog. Cousin Fred is hoping to hijack my talents and make whatever self-help book idea they come up with readable and reasonably intelligent sounding. Hmm… Here are a few of the concepts they’re working on. Remember, you’ve not seen me, and you’ve never heard these concepts:
Okay, so now you know why I’m hiding out. I honestly don’t need this crap in my life. Like I said, you never saw me. I have too many dumb projects of my own to work through – like breaking (or creating) a world record! I’m happy to announce that the 2019 edition of Guinness World Records has been released. And, boy oh boy, is there some bat sh*t crazy records in there! Let’s see there’s the dude who now holds the world record for crushing watermelons with his head in a minute. The number is 49, by the way. He’s very popular at picnics where the host “inadvertently” forgot to bring a knife. Or, the fool who set a record catching the most spears fired by a spear gun above water in one minute (magic number is 15). Number 16 was tragic, just tragic. Let us not forget Rolf Bucholz of Dortmund, Germany who has made into the Guinness book twice. First in 2010 as the world’s most pierced man and now in the 2019 edition as the man with the most body modifications (516). That’s Rolf pictured at the top of this post. Truly, one of life’s overachievers. Then there’s Josh Horton, who set a world record for balancing a guitar on his forehead for 7 minutes, 3.9 seconds. Nicely done, Josh. Gives me a new purpose for the surplus of guitars I have here. The people who publish the Guinness World Records say that the 2019 version contains some 44,000 records. The first publication 60 years ago had maybe 100. I can remember first becoming aware of the Guinness Book of World Records in elementary school and thinking I could do that (whatever “that” was at the time). So, I’m thinking the Cosmic City Blog needs to set few world records. I’m going to be working on a new “that” and will let you know when I come up with an idea. In the meantime, if you’re interested in joining TEAM CCB or have an idea you’d like to see us fail miserably at trying, drop me an email to [email protected] and let’s get to it! That is all! |
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